


Alteration

by misbehavingvigilante



Series: Marvel Spookytober Prompts 2019 [31]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Disability, Dragons, Inspired by Maleficent (2014), M/M, Magic, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 01:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbehavingvigilante/pseuds/misbehavingvigilante
Summary: In which a Fae changes a Dragon into whatever he needs, and the dragon may or may not be okay with this.





	Alteration

**Author's Note:**

>   
[{Join me for the spook}](https://marvelspookytoberprompts.tumblr.com/post/188006745165/click-to-see-a-better-quality-of-the-prompts)  

> 
> Day 31 - Dragon 
> 
> A Maleficent AU to end Spookytober. I really wanted this a lot longer but I just wasn't able to juggle this on top of the daily writings, I'm still relatively happy with the result tho.

It’s really no surprise why he’s attacked.

He’s small for a dragon, easy to mistake him for a juvenile and attempt to put him down because of it until he can grow any larger and become even more of a threat. The problem with that line of thinking is Steve has grown the most he’s going to, he’s always going to look gangly and have a short wingspan.

That’s just how it was, people thought him an easy mark and attacked him because of it.

The net had been weighted down with iron ends, trapping him small body from underneath it as he breathe out fire weakly, only serving to heat up the net rather than burn hot enough to free himself. Steve felt his stamina draining from him, as the words of humans muddled around him, he didn’t know who they were, but it didn’t really matter.

He was never one to lay down and die but he didn’t see any other option with his strength fading from him.

Suddenly, there was a blanket of warmth cradling and surrounding him. Though half-opened bleary eyes Steve makes out red and golds tendrils of magic, until something shifts. His body began to change as his scales faded away until he was nothing but soft flesh and walking upright on two legs.

The sight of a dragon turning into a man, scares off his attackers or perhaps it’s the magic, he can’t know for sure.

His stomach is still swirling in complaint from the disorientation between going from two different forms as he tried to get used the world as it was now. He was a bit taller as a human than he was a dragon. As dragon Steve was bigger than a dog but shorter than a horse.

Steve spotted the sight of a human taller than him, or at least he thought human until he saw an unnatural hue of gold eyes faded back into warm brown eyes and ties them to the magic that had just taken him apart and put him back together.

Steve has many, many questions but the Fae approached him first, and looks him up and down as they get in the first word.

“What is wrong with you?”

Steve’s seen that look before in which people look over him and can’t quite figure out what went wrong with him. No one is usually so bold to actually say the words, any amount of relief or gratitude he had leaves him quickly.

“Hey, no one asked you to change me!” Steve fisted his new hands, they were so soft, and there were no claws, and he at least had claws as a dragon. How kind was it to declaw him like this. “How dare you have the audacity to be rude!”

The tendrils of gold and red appear once again but surrounding the Fae who looms over him with their height and with the promise of something dark in their eyes, if Steve doesn’t yield. Which is just too fucking bad for them, because he’s never known when to quit.

“You think I’m afraid of you?”

“You should be.” However the Fae backs off, apparently seeing something that change their mind and that’s when Steve realizes something he should have before. There’s a glaring absence of wings on this Fae, not that all of them have them, but the ones that walk upright and look otherwise human aside from the otherworldly eyes?

They always have wings.

Which brings into question about why a Fae would have what looked like a walking stick, and seemed even pained to be walking on two feet such as this.

The fight goes out of Steve a little at that, suddenly he begins to piece together exactly why he was saved. “You need me for my wings.”

“Yes but I can’t quite have a dragon running around, even one so small as yourself draws attention.”

“Hey!” Just when Steve thought they were going to be capable of having an actual conversation, the rudeness returned. If he had his wings in this form, they would have expanded behind him, showing his displeasure with how they curled towards the previous slight.

“That wasn’t an insult this time.”

“That’s not exactly better.” Steve mumbled. “Why change me into a man then if you needed a bird?”

Steve doesn’t get an answer. “Are you really just expecting me to feel indebted to you and do what you want?”

“Aren’t you?”

Steve couldn’t deny he was somewhat indebted and he had been taught to pay his debts back. “Depends on what you want me to do. Saved my life or not, I am not willingly to do whatever you want me too. Even if that costs my life, I will do what I think is right.”

“Such a strange dragon you are.” Steve couldn’t tell if that a sign that Fae was impressed or perplexed. Or both, but nevertheless they continued. “Nothing too untoward, I just need you to go where I cannot and report back surely that’s within your skill?”

“Do you have to phrase it like that?” Steve didn’t care for their condescending tone. “And I’m not doing anything for you without a name.”

“A name. How very, very broad.”

Steve internally cursed, he should have remembered when dealing with Fae, you needed to be specific or else your questions wouldn’t really get any answers. “A name for you, I already have a name.”

“So you want a name and you haven’t even told me yours?” The eyes sparkled for the first time with something resembling merriment instead of just nonchalance. At that moment, Steve briefly thought that the eyes were pretty but it was tempered back by all the rudeness he couldn’t excuse.

“With how rude you are, you haven’t earned my name.” He crossed his arms, he would have huffed out smoke if he could so Steve settle for the sound of disdain humans could pull off.

“Very well. Call me whatever you like and I’ll call you whatever I like in return, fair?” Steve rolled his eyes, but it gave him the freedom to think of anything else to call the Fae aside from that so maybe it wasn’t all bad.

There was just one caveat. “If you’re just going to call me sickly, then no, you may not.”

“It would be apt.” The asshole pointed out and Steve really felt like punching them. Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t have claws right now or else they’d be piercing into this soft, yielding flesh and drawing his own blood instead of this wretched Fae’s as he seethed.

“You are such an asshole. I have the worst luck in the world to be saved by you. You wouldn’t like it if I called you wingless.”

Steve expects anger, he expects getting told off or even changed into something uncomfortable like an ant or an worm, small and helpless as he much surely look in the Fae’s point of view for that, but none of those things happen.

Instead the Fae looks like as if they were struck, entirely silent, unnaturally silent with how the entire area around them quiets down there’s no sound of insects or birds, there’s nothing at all, as if being caught in a lifeless, soundless void.

It’s there and gone again in instant. Everything returns to normal, as they turn their back and walk forward.

It isn’t difficult to catch up with them, even if Steve’s legs are shorter and he doesn’t feel the rattle of breath when he exerts himself in activity, and he isn’t shooed off even if his attempts to follow are obvious.

Steve isn’t sure why he isn’t told off.

He’s clearly not what the Fae expected in a servant and yet Steve is following them nonetheless despite how ill-tempered and badly behaved they are. They’re powerful no doubt, but they do seem weaken from the loss of their wings and with that expression earlier.

It’s stupid but Steve wants to stick around because he’s somewhat concerned about what lead to the circumstances.

The stub of those wings in particular from the back, Steve can tell it didn’t happen in a fight. It’s far too clean cut for it to have happened if the Fae hadn’t been resisting. Magic then? Steve didn’t know magic that well, but it was possible.

For a Fae to attack another in such a way? It seemed more likely they’ve just go to effort to kill than to maim like this.

Not that he knew.

Maybe it was just curiosity and concern he was getting mixed up. Maybe he didn’t really care at all and just wanted to know what happened.

~

Steve is used to being small, however, he’s really not used to being this small.

Maybe he had been this small when he had just hatched, but it’s not like he had many memories of that time. Not to mention this form was small and full of feathers. Dragons and Ravens both could fly but their wings looked and felt very, very different.

Still, he had to agree with the Fae, if he was going anywhere near a functional castle, a dragon form was just asking for trouble whereas a bird wouldn’t quite arouse the same amount of suspicion. The fondness for shiny things was present in both of these forms, Steve felt his attention waning at times when certain things caught his eyes, but he had to shake it off and observe the ceremony.

That was apparently his job today, and it wasn’t one that Steve had taken issue with, even if he had squawked angrily at the Fae for changing him without so much as a warning and a dismissive hand.

They were still not very well behaved and Steve hoped that would change or inevitably he’d just leave. There was nothing binding him to the Fae as far as he could tell.

Steve hoped to keep it that way, he didn’t like the idea of being bond to someone like that with no chance of escape.

He found an area of the long walls that had faded with time creating a small enough hole for him to look through but not quite enough for him to force himself through. The castle was very well decorated and Steve had seen so much activity around the town that should special must be happening.

He saw a man on his knees receiving a crown and Steve suppressed the temptation to squeeze through and try and run off with it. It was probably much too heavy in this form, but with dragon and raven instincts warring between him, his weakness for shiny things was rather present.

It seemed like a coronation ceremony.

Steve wondered why it mattered.

~

Steve flew back to the abandoned ruins of the castle that the Fae has taken sheltered in. He’s seen it many times as a dragon, it’s had long since been abandoned and left to the elements to reclaim as no humans dare enter these lands, particularly so far in.

He flies around the Fae, cawing at him relentlessly because he can’t really communicate much like this, and if the asshole wants a report so back they have to actually switch him back.

A twist of a sunkissed wrist slips out of the long dark robes the Fae wears. Their skin is a paler underneath, that’s not quite a surprise but still there’s something about the show of skin that entranced Steve. The show of power with just what one flick of a wrist can do? The fact he hasn’t seen it before, so that it is anything new about the Fae, because they are not much for volunteering information? Regardless, the shift from raven to man occurs and that occupied his thoughts instead.

It was disorientating moving from a small mass to a larger mass, having your bones expanded and added and filling out new shapes. Steve hadn’t been in the raven form for very long, but he feels it’s loss when suddenly he’s standing again and testing out his coordination and his thoughts as a man.

The raven still squawks in his mind, a memory of magic that has yet to leave him, Steve wondered if it ever would. He felt the echo of a man in his head even as a Raven, does a piece of him remain even when he shifted forms?

He hasn’t had time to ask and the Fae looks at him expectantly. “Well?”

“There was a coronation ceremony. Someone not of the King’s previous line, older than I would have expected them to crown a King, if I’m being honest. I know humans age faster than us.”

“A crown?” The Fae said, curious and casual at first, as if this was a something not especially noteworthy however Steve knows there’s some hidden meaning here or else they wouldn’t have asked. “He did this to me so he could have a crown?”

Anger crackled increasingly at each spoken word, tendrils of magic spiraled out and away from the Fae until they coalesced and thickened together into a fog of pure red magic. The fog of magic washed over Steve even if he was a few feet away from the Fae and covered the castle, and even it’s surroundings later in a thick fog one might see on a cold morning.

The Fae shrieked, hurt and foreboding tilting their head back as they screamed into the sky and a beacon of red light reaching the dark clouds above, and lightning up the entire sky near them as if it was an angry sun.

Steve imagined, it could been seen from very far away, but doubted anyone would dare venture inland to discover the cause.

Though with what was said, someone once had ventured inland, someone the Fae had known, someone who was now King and the key to their missing wings.

The magic finally, finally burns from the sky after the Fae has screamed themselves hoarse.

Steve quietly thinks to himself maybe he should have stolen the crown, after all.

Maybe that would have made them feel if only a little better.

~

The day after, the Fae still seems a bit exhausted from the magical outburst.

Not exactly a surprise, but since Steve sees the notes of tiredness he pays extra close attention, he hasn’t been given a command so he’s just following behind them.

It doesn’t happen immediately, but eventually the Fae falls, gets tripped up over some overgrown trees roots with the walking stick lodged in between them. The loss of stability sends them tumbling down to the earth before Steve can do anything about it.

“Do you want help?” Steve asked because he’d been in this position before when people assumed because he was sickly and weak that he immediately needed their help, all the time, that he was incapable of doing anything on his own.

He didn’t want to do that to the Fae, who know had a taste of what it was like when you didn’t fit the mould.

“You want to help me?” The Fae laughed.

“Only if you want. I’m not the kind of creature that ignores someone in distress.” Steve stated proudly, even if it hadn’t always ended well for him, he always stood up for people when there was trouble.

“…it might be nice.”

Steve moved in front of the Fae, offering his hands and the Fae reached out to grab his. The Fae was larger than him, not a surprise, a lot of creatures were larger than him, but Steve still had enough strength to help them get off the ground.

The Fae looked at him, eyes following him even as Steve went back to fetch the walking stick and give it back to them.

“Tony.”

“What?” Steve asked.

“You asked what my name was.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “That’s your name? Your actual name?”

“It’s the name I like.” Tony clarified. “Call me that or asshole or Fae as you usually do.”

“To be fair, you were acting like an asshole.”

“Then don’t be afraid to call me out on it. May I ask what yours is? Or have I not earned that yet?”

Steve thought on that, it was clear something rather traumatic had happened to Tony, and his behavior came from that, seemingly even if that didn’t really excuse all of his behavior, it explained it. Still, one good interaction didn’t erase all the previous ones.

“No, not yet.” Steve decided.

“Fair enough.”

~

After that point, it isn’t that Tony changed drastically but his words are chosen with more thought and he’s more careful when he shifts Steve’s forms instead of doing it with a careless hand and not paying mind or heed to the surrounding environment.

“There’s not much protection that this castle offers.” Steve brought up since Tony apparently isn’t sharing his thoughts again, either he’s thinking of something he thinks Steve doesn’t need to know or he’s in that dark place in his thoughts again.

If it’s the latter then well, he had to bring Tony out of it. So far Tony’s magic hasn’t hurt him, even that outburst did nothing to him so somewhere in Tony’s mind, Steve must be seen as an ally so there’s not a threat of friendly fire.

Steve has seen Tony heal things in the Moors before, so there’s some amount of ability to heal in him but Steve’s suffered through enough pain recently and rather not revisit that unnecessarily.

“I’m sure there are some enclosed rooms if that’s your issue.” Tony provided.

“Getting wet isn’t my issue. A cave at least keeps you away from the elements, and you can’t tell me you don’t have the magic to craft one into something cozier if you take such offense at it.”

“If I was going to change anything, it’d be this castle. Make it rival his in splendor but with none of the trickery.”

There it was, him again. Tony hadn’t mentioned a name, hadn’t needed to mention a name as Steve had gotten that information on his own during his reports. He wisely never mentioned the name because it seemed like a good way to upset Tony.

Steve said nothing.

It was understandable that Tony was grief stricken and revenge riddled, but Steve didn’t see this ending too well even when the man was dead, if Tony couldn’t let go.

~

Tony makes a grand wall of thorns surrounding the Moors, as if encasing them in an armor so impervious and impenetrable that they shall never suffer harm at a human’s hand again. It’s not necessarily a bad idea if Tony had been so badly wounded, and now the one who had done the deed stood as the King of neighboring lands.

With the last of magic before Tony collapsed, he shifted Steve into a wolf, his girth in this form enough for the Fae to hold onto with hands grabbing his fur for purchase as he walked slowly back to their castle. He’s not big enough as a dragon to let Tony stay on his back and give him the gift of flight, but he’s grateful for the wolf form to allow him help Tony if only for a bit.

He doesn’t find the touch as grating as he thought he might, it pinches a little where Tony holds him, but Tony is warm so unnaturally warm like fire at a hearth.

Steve can’t really communicate, he has Tony’s walking stick in his mouth but he shuffled closer to Tony when his grip slackens or when it seems like Tony might fall asleep to stir him back into consciousness.

Tony had stretched himself too thin again, and that night when he props up Tony against one of the fallen castle’s rooms that is mostly intact, he plants himself on Tony’s lap to provide extra warmth and security.

The Fae doesn’t complain even once and Steve sees it as a promising sign for their relationship. He doesn’t tell Tony that that wolf now in him say him as an injured pack member, but of what order, Steve couldn’t place.

~

“I’ve been meaning to ask…”

“Why you don’t feel as much pain?” Tony surmised, he and Steve had just been talking a walk through the Moors. Since the wall of thorns had gone up, so too had a shadow on the occupants in fear of what may happen next, as if Tony would let anything happen.

Tony didn’t care as much in himself as he did others, it was strangely contradicting but also endearing if you asked Steve.

Not that anyone really did, he didn’t really interact with much aside from Tony.

“There is that.”

“This is how you were born, sickly and weak. It was easier to take away the ailments of your form rather than to change it hence why you are still small but not suffering.”

“Even if you could, I wouldn’t have want you to without asking me. That would be wrong.”

Steve thinks of his illnesses, how close he’s come to death in his life not from a fight, but rather but his body has just outright betrayed him and while yes, he’s still small and scrawny, this is him. It’s nice not having to deal with those ailments, but with so many things shifting as he shifts forms, he finds it grounding to still be small.

It’s a reminder that he’s still himself, and he’s not sure what he’d do if that would ripped away from him.

“I did already change you without asking.” Tony reminded. “You were a dragon, now you’ve been a man, a raven and a wolf. Is that not changed?”

“I am still smaller than normal in those forms. You didn’t change that about me.”

“Then I won’t.” Tony said, and it’s more seriously than he’s ever heard the Fae speak before. “If you’re happy as you are, I won’t change you beyond what I require.”

“I don’t mind being what you need.” Steve admitted, glancing into those golden rimmed eyes bright with magic once more with a fond smile on his face. At first, it had been grating but now Steve finds it’s less about paying back his life that Tony stayed, or curiosity about the Fae, but rather he stays because he wants to stay.

~

“Are you sure?” Steve asked because up until this point it’s just been him observing, there’d never been anything so upfront.

“Yes. It’s time.” Tony nodded. “I say we make his life very difficult. Not enough to simply kill the man.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not? I don’t want him to think he can get away with gaining my trust, and then stealing my wings away.” The air crackled with magic, showing Tony’s bad mood as if his tone didn’t do that on its own.

“I meant only that I wanted to tell you that my name was Steve, before we end your quest for revenge.”

Tony blinked, disarmed by the confession. The magic summoned, falling fast like a flame that had been doused with cold water. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. So I finally earned your name.”

“You’re not as much of an asshole as you used to be.”

“High praise coming from you.” Tony chuckled, but looking happier than Steve had seen him thus far. “I need a horse this time, it’s a long trip.”

“I suppose you’ll just have to ride me.” Steve shrugged, and allowed the familiar presence of magic within his body once more to shift him into something new, and as a new presence settled in the back of his mind. 

He’d make sure that Tony had a life to look forward even when this quest was done.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna chat, I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thiefoftruth26)


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